Chicago artists channel creativity into protesting the immigration crackdown

Geoff Bennett:

The Trump administration's nationwide immigration crackdown has ignited protests from Los Angeles to Minneapolis. It has also galvanized grassroots artists and community organization.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown reports from Chicago, where shootings involving federal immigration agents and President Trump's threats to send in the National Guard led to citywide protests. Artists have been at the center of the movement, using their skills and resources as part of organized dissent.

This report is part of our Art in Action series, exploring the intersection of art and democracy and our Canvas arts coverage.

Jeffrey Brown:

At first glance, a normal craft night at a neighborhood arts center. But as volunteers fold printed pamphlets called zines, they're really participating in a grassroots political protest.

Teresa Magana, Pilsen Arts and Community House: With everything that's been going on since the summer with immigration and ICE presence, we started a whistle community alert campaign. And so people come in on Mondays and Tuesdays to help pack whistles and zines.

Jeffrey Brown:

Teresa Magana is an artist and co-founder of the Pilsen Arts and Community House in Chicago. It hosts art exhibitions, teaches classes for kids, and offers a free space for artists to work. It's in the heart of the heavily Latino Pilsen neighborhood, which has been one target area amid the Trump administration's citywide immigration raids.

The zines and whistles instruct volunteers how to signal to residents when ICE is in the neighborhood.

(Whistles blowing)

Jeffrey Brown:

Magana was inspired after seeing protests in Los Angeles this past summer.

Teresa Magana:

It came very natural, I think, for us to say, hey, this is something we know we have capacity to do. We're artists. We know how to make zines. We know how to make a design.

Jeffrey Brown:

Why through this place? Why was that your response?

Teresa Magana:

We are a community space focused on arts, but we also are very much part of an activist community. Pilsen in Chicago is historically known for that through the arts and through our voices.

Jeffrey Brown:

The history of that activism is written quite literally on the walls of the Pilsen neighborhood. Political murals here go back decades, protesting gentrification, American military intervention, and more recently the presence of federal immigration agents in the city.

Local printmaker Atlan Arceo-Witzl has turned his focus to helping. And printmaking is an art form that enables him to get his work out quickly.

Atlan Arceo-Witzl, Artist:

Now we have all this water-based media that drives really fast. It's something you can kind of push out to your networks of support, whether that be for a demonstration in the streets or for pasting up outside or stapling to a telephone pole.

Jeffrey Brown:

From a graphic image perspective, what do you need to make it work?

Atlan Arceo-Witzl:

Having a balance between the words and the image is key, because sometimes the image is the thing that holds you after you're able to read the text.

Jeffrey Brown:

Making sure those images reach people in the real world presents another challenge.

Melita Morales, Art Professor:

I think there is a tendency for people to think about the arts as something that doesn't happen in our everyday life.

Jeffrey Brown:

Art Professor Melita Morales is part of a collective that supports immigrant families impacted by federal raids. She organizes events where the group makes banners together, using art to get out their message and to build community.

Melita Morales:

My role as an artist is to create opportunities for people to come together and work side by side and ask each other questions about who they are and how they got to Chicago and their lives as we sit and work with each other.

Jeffrey Brown:

Morales also silk-screens bandanas that so-called rapid response groups use to identify each other when they watch for immigration agents in their neighborhoods.

Melita Morales:

I think a lot of times artists are processing the world around them and they express that through their use of color, form and shape. And when they're brought to view in a public world, then they become meanings that are expressed and negotiated by all those who view them.

Jose Ochoa, President, National Museum of Mexican Art: This becomes more of an everyday image, doesn't it? You have seen this in different ways in our news.

Jeffrey Brown:

The scenes of the immigration crackdown in the streets and the protests against it are also impacting how traditional arts institutions think, says Jose Ochoa, president of the National Museum of Mexican Art.

His wakeup call came after Department of Homeland Security officials showed up at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture last summer.

Jose Ochoa:

We needed to know how to engage if ICE were to come to the door. What do we tell our people? What happens to our guests, employees? What if we have school groups? Like, what do we do?

Jeffrey Brown:

So he organized an event with cultural institutions across the city.

Jose Ochoa:

The rules of the game kept changing, and so here at the museum we have had to keep moving along. And so, back then, in the summer, I was learning how to identify the warrants. What's an administrative warrant versus a judicial warrant?

Jeffrey Brown:

These are not the kind of concerns you thought you would have as a head of a museum.

Jose Ochoa:

No, not really. Am I completely surprised? No. In communities of color and in disenfranchised communities, we're always waiting for the shoe to drop. And it's always going to drop on us first.

Jeffrey Brown:

The museum is also saving pieces of community protest art, its It's traditional work of collecting art now very much in the moment.

Prominent artists in Chicago's hip-hop community, including Vic Mensa and Chance The Rapper, have also been using their voices to respond to what they're seeing.

Femdot, Rapper:

We're seeing videos of things, people getting pushed out of buildings and out of cars and things of that sort. And it's like you can't unsee it.

Jeffrey Brown:

We met 30-year-old Femdot, a Chicago native born to Nigerian immigrant parents who's active in the community as musician and head of an education and civic engagement nonprofit.

Femdot:

I'm a child of immigrants. so, like, it's extremely personal. It could be me.

Jeffrey Brown:

So how does that impact you as an artist, as a musician?

Femdot:

Having a platform, whether that is just the music itself or what I have -- the platform I have built based off the music, it's like, OK, I have to be able to speak to this in some capacity, simply just tapping into my community what's happening, what's going on, how can I be of service, how can I amplify things, and also create safe places for community to develop

Because, also, people also experiencing joy and also having community is equally as radical.

Jeffrey Brown:

Back at the Pilsen Arts and Community House, Teresa Magana says she sees her work as part of a wider movement.

Teresa Magana:

Everybody that has stepped in here, they have taken it back home to their family, their friends, to local businesses. It's just a way to spread the pollen, you know?

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown:

In the form of whistles and zines, with orders for more coming in nationwide.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in Chicago.